Thursday, June 18, 2009

The world's toughest cellphone?


It seems there's about to be a new contender for the title of 'world's toughest cellphone'.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has been putting a new phone which claims to be the world's toughest, through its paces.

The veteran explorer, who recently became the the oldest Briton to climb Everest, was asked to try to destroy the Land Rover S1 by Sonim phone.

Sir Ranulph, 65, was invited to Land Rover's Solihull test facility to see if the company had lived up to its aim to build a phone as tough as its vehicles.


There's more at the link.

According to Űbergizmo:

The Land Rover S1 from Sonim Technologies is pretty much the cellphone for Wolverine since it eschews similar qualities as the ol' canucklehead - it is nigh indestructible despite not being laced with a single atom of adamantium. The Land Rover S1 is touted to be the world’s first IP-67 rated GSM mobile, making it immune to dust as well as being waterproof up to 1m. In addition, you can throw the S1 around without much care since it is dirt, shock and drop resistant, capable of handling up to 400kgs [880 pounds] of pressure before breaking. The handset comes in sort of a pre-owned state, and we mean that in a good way. After all, buttons on it has undergone tests of over 500,000 pushes before being approved, while the battery offers a phenomenal standby time of 1,500 hours as well as 18 hours of talk time. Other features include a 2-megapixel waterproof camera, built-in GPS, torch light, an integrated FM radio, 2GB memory slot, WAP browser and Bluetooth connectivity. At $490 a pop, it is surprisingly cheap considering the amount of punishment it can take.


Yep. It sounds like this is the go-to phone to take on the Appalachian Trail, or a hiking or climbing holiday anywhere, for that matter. Having bashed a few cellphones into premature obsolescence in my time, I wish I'd had one of these a few years ago.

I'm also tempted to challenge Apple to put an iPhone through the same torture tests. I can see it now . . . chips, silicon and plastic everywhere!



Peter

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hah, it still wouldn't have survived what happened to my last cell phone. I was jogging across a road, and it fell out of my pocket. I turned around to go get it, took one step back into the road, and decided to let the semi hit my phone instead of hitting me. The tire tossed my phone a good 10 feet into the air.

Then again, I doubt ANYONE can make a phone that would survive that.

Anonymous said...

Dang - I was hoping it was available in the US. It seems I'm always dropping my phone and then making my dog pick it up. I regularly go through a phone a year. This one might even serve as a handy fetch toy!